


Face of Glass

by youknowyunho



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst, LOVE WITH PLOT, Mirrors, NSFW eventually, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Slow Burn, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-20 20:26:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17629103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youknowyunho/pseuds/youknowyunho
Summary: You’d been residing in your very own apartment for at least seven months now- a good amount of time to get settled in. An avid deal-finder, you purchase a floor-length mirror at a world culture festival within the city for a shockingly low price. Upon uncovering the mirror, you find you may have brought home more than you bargained for.In which Seonghwa is trapped within the mirror- fear turns to friendship, and it all leads to a frantic search for a way to get him out before it’s too late.





	1. A Sparkling Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> so i needed some seonghwa/reader fic and found a lack thereof, so i decided to take matters into my own hands ;) i love ateez already, and this cutie needed a fic about himself.

Driving along the highway, you glance in the rearview at your latest buy: an ornate, floor-length mirror that could be mounted to the wall of your choosing. The rectangular reflective surface was framed by an entanglement of beveled vine-like designs, the vines a tangle of dark and light tones. 

The mirror was currently wrapped in a sheet, cushioned by a blanket underneath as you cautiously drove back to your apartment.

You recall your exchange with the mysterious woman at the festival. Amidst your browsing at the almost flea market-esque displays, you stumbled upon a sea of staggeringly low-priced furniture and home decorations. You silently paced around the displays, checking price tags, thinking of what could complement the decor you have at home.

“Anything catching your eye, my dear?” A smooth, low female voice from behind you rings out. You turn to face a dark-haired woman with striking eyes.

“Ah, well I-“ your eyes dart around the display, avoiding her gaze. You didn’t want to say no, that would seem rude. Your eyes fixated on a large white sheet that was slung over a tall object. You gestured towards the mysterious monolith. “What about this?”

“Oh, yes!!” the woman nearly cries out. “One-of-a-kind, to be found nowhere else!” She pulls the draping sheet off in a dramatic sweeping motion, disturbing the surrounding ground. The absence of the sheet reveals a large mirror, a now beacon of light in the middle of a sunny day. Beyond the sunlight, the mirror seemed to hold a radiance of its own- truly like no other. 

“I obtained this beauty through a childhood friend of mine. He was doing business overseas in the past and told me he received it as a gift from a foreign client. We reconnected in the past year, but... he travels so much nowadays, he has no use for it. Well, the context of the piece is neither here nor there, but I don’t have much of a use for it either!” she said with a smile.

You think to yourself that a woman of her beauty and stature would never find use for a mirror in her life.

“The work on the outside frame is like no other- so detailed. And, oh! Come, come,” she beckons you to the back side of the mirror.

“Right here is an engraving, hmm, heaven knows how old this may really be...” she traces a slender finger along the left side of the back of the mirror near the top corner. Along the edge are beautifully etched letters into the metal backing.

_“Time will not rent love asunder. Though days may pass, we will ALWAYS be together.”_

A deep sigh near your ear takes you from inside your head as you read the small message and thought about how much you felt like you were currently on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.

“Well! Sixty dollars is what it’s going for! Take it or leave it, love.”

“Only sixty?” your mouth fell slightly agape.

“Well I can certainly raise the price if you’d like!”

“Oh no, no! I’m just... wow. I’ll take it,” you said with a small smile, your eyes tracing over the mirror once more.

“You won’t find another in this lifetime,” the woman said with a wink.

She was strange... but she also helped you load the mirror into your car so you let her quirks slide.

With a slam of your trunk, you parted ways.

“Thanks so much,” you said courteously. 

“No... thank you...” she replied with a grin and began to slink away back to her booth.

Getting into your car, you hear in the distance:

_**“NO RETURNS, LOVE!”** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there again. thank you for reading thus far. it may be a slow buildup but i have big plans for this story so prepare for the shitshow :) i hope you continue this adventure xx


	2. Not Just for Decoration

Wiping the sweat off of your forehead with the back of your gloved hand, you step back to admire your handiwork. Handiwork that took two hours and 3 extra holes in the wall but, that’s okay. The mirror was finally hung up, in the right spot, and level on the wall.

“Damn, I’m good,” you whisper to yourself, tearing off your gloves and throwing them to the floor. Sitting on your bed, you guzzled some water as you admired the new piece adjacent to your bed.  
You found yourself staring into your distant reflection as your own figure stared back. The clarity of the reflection was impeccable and it hadn’t been wiped once since you had seen it to it now being across from you. Low maintenance. Nice.

That night, you crawled into bed as per usual following your nightly routine. Scrolling through your phone, you realized the reflecting of the artificial light coming back at you, slightly illuminating the normally pitch black room. Gazing around, you felt overly aware of your surroundings, everything appearing as almost a mere shadow in your peripheral vision. A knot of slight paranoia formed in your stomach as you turned off your phone to resign to sleep.

You didn’t sleep so well that night.

Or the following night.

Or the following three nights.

Sloughing through your normally easy office work, you found yourself aggravated at your now continuous exhaustion.

“Shit, girl. You look bad,” your closest coworker comments.

You turn your head slowly to her. “Thank you. The greatest compliment I’ve ever received.”

“Just doing my job,” she says, not even logged onto her computer an hour into her shift. “Seriously though, you sick? One night stands? Spill the fuckin’ tea already,” she adds without looking up from inspecting her nails.

“God no, it’s gonna sound stupid but, I got this mirror like, four days ago and now I can’t fuckin’ sleep!” you say, throwing your hands haphazardly into the air for dramatic effect. “It’s like, my phone screen reflects off of it, the moon reflects off of it, and I’m somewhat pissed at myself for putting it in my bedroom because of all the horror movies I’ve seen about mirrors and their… spooky shit.”

“Okay but-“ she turns in her chair to log on. A shock.

You wait in bated silence as she pulls open a tab and finally lands on what she’s apparently looking for.

“Okay, here. ‘According to the principles of feng shui, mirrors are a powerful tool when it comes to increasing lighting and reflecting energy. Mirrors apparently increase energy and direct it the opposite way. Experts say you shouldn't place the mirror opposite your bed because it will reflect energy back at you and keep you awake.’ Fucking. Boom. There’s your answer,” she says, tapping the screen for effect.

“How the fuck did you even know about this? You know what? I actually don’t want to know because now I know it and that’s all I need.”

“Again, just doing my job,” she says with a smile, resuming her hard work examining her nails.

Filled with newfound purpose, you arrive home that evening, immediately waltzing into your bedroom to glare at the mirror. It couldn’t be anything else keeping you awake, this is the only thing that’s changed in the past few days. This has to be it. Without even changing out of your work clothes, you find the power drill once again to get to work.

Placing your hands on either side of the mirror and reminding yourself to lift with your legs, you pump yourself up to remove it and carry it elsewhere. After a mental countdown, you muster all your strength- 

as the mirror doesn’t budge.

You try to lift it again, to push up from the floor, hell, you even attempt to pull it off the wall, but there’s no give.

“What the fu..” you’re panting as you try to see between the mirror and the wall to find the issue. No light shines through to reveal any gap.

You sigh in frustration as you throw your gloves to the floor once more. Exhausted and annoyed, you decide to give up and try other methods of removal tomorrow. Butter? Lube? Chainsaw? You couldn’t think straight anymore.

That night, you angrily laid in bed staring at the ceiling knowing your attempts at good sleep were entirely fruitless. You started cursing at the mirror, how dare it keep you from dreaming, from being able to function at work, from being simply LAZY?

Your eyes feeling directionless in the darkness, you looked all around the room, including where the mirror was.

Shooting up in bed, you frantically turn your bedside lamp on as you swore you saw a figure in the mirror. Somehow illuminated, but still shrouded in darkness. Like it was a mile away, but still coming toward you. “Great, now I’m hallucinating,” you thought to yourself, turning off the lamp and laying back down. 

You lay under the covers until a shiver runs through you, despite the presence of a blanket. Suddenly, you hear _whispers_ \- you feel a coldness. Like wind. _Whispers_ and something like humming far away, a breeze from nowhere, a sound from somewhere.

Your room is illuminated by a ghastly glow coming from the mirror, not a white light but almost somehow gray or even wanting to be near-black.

Your fear gripped you but it was too late to turn back. The mirror was gripping you too, pulling you in, beckoning you to  stare into it, to look, to **SEE!!**

A darkened reflection of you, your room- they seemed to be an overlay to another image you couldn’t fully decipher. Sand. The sound of water? Trees and clouds.

A hand placed on the mirror, you leaned in closer to try and see what you weren’t fully seeing. A clearer whisper radiated from the mirror, the words floating to find your ears.

“Please… let me… I need to get… out…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoohohoohohohoooOoOohOhHOhOhoooHOHO


	3. It’s a Start

Your eyes went wide as the words registered in your mind.

“Is someone there?” you whisper back to the unclear reflection of your own face and the landscape behind and inside of it.

“Yes, I am here! Don’t go, please,” the voice became clearer, smoother, the voice of a man, beckoning your lasting presence. He sounded kind, his voice smooth, but his consonants precise. He spoke with a purpose, begging to be heard.

“I’m not. I won’t. Who are you? Or- where are you?” you replied in stark confusion. He seemed harmless, not much like a horrific demon after your soul. You trusted your gut and continued to speak with him, hoping that it wouldn’t end with your bloody death. 

“I’m in here, can you not see me?” he replied. His voice was not loud, in fact it was as if he were just sitting right next to you, quietly speaking in perhaps a movie theater or in church.

“No, I unfortunately cannot. I only see sand and trees and what looks to be the faraway ocean in the distance. That, and my translucent face,” you said in response. 

“Oh, dear. Perhaps I will appear once I’ve been awake longer. My name is Seonghwa.”

“Seonghwa. Nice to meet you. I would shake your hand but…” 

He chuckled. You exchanged pleasantries then he proceeded to answer your second question. 

“Where I am… how best to explain this… Okay. Think of the mirror less as a reflection and more of a portal. There’s a whole world in here that remains unseen to you. My world is built upon whatever is reflected into the mirror so as you can guess, your bedroom has now been duplicated and attached to the world inside here. This… ocean view behind me is the first reflection into the mirror once it and I became one. That was... so very long ago.” His voice trailed off in what sounded like distinct remembrance of his past. He cleared his throat. “Does that make sense?” he asked, his voice still gentle.

You ran the concept back through your mind.

“I believe so. I’m… envisioning this sort of map… or that if I were to step into the mirror, I would be able to turn left or right into a whole new dimension. Is that fairly close?” 

“That’s a fine way to view it, y/n.”

You felt a funny sort of feeling from such a visceral voice speaking your name. Another question crawled to the front of your mind.

“Awake. You mentioned being awake? Have you been asleep or in some… hibernation?”

Another breathy chuckle.

“Yes. So it would seem. I don’t ever feel the sensation of being ‘asleep,’ but I can only ever see things or, be ‘awake’ when the mirror is uncovered. I would say by the way things appear, it’s been quite a long while.”

“Wait, you can see me right now? I still can’t see you.”

You felt a little self-conscious. Your room was a wreck. So were you. 

The feeling passed almost immediately as it usually did and you decided not to care so much, but you were still wishing to put a face to the name.

“Oh, really! Odd. Perhaps because it’s been so long-“

His sentence was cut short by the chime of your grandfather clock from the living area, another one of your many finds. Three A.M. Shit. You had to be up for work in five hours.

“Damn, it’s late. Um… Seonghwa? I need to head to sleep… but I can’t- uh,” you didn’t know how to kindly convey that you needed to sleep, that he SEEMED NICE, but his presence was still weird and creepy as hell for the time being.

“......OH! Just cover me up. I’ll be asleep too.”

“Right. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“If you’d like. It really is your decision,” he said, chuckling once more.

“Oh. Right. Of course… Goodnight, Seonghwa.”

“Sleep well.”

You stood, pulling a spare blanket from your bed and draping it over the top of the mirror. Settling into bed, you felt so strange that behind the blanket was a guaranteed presence, but still one you could not see. 

Although pondering the thoughts in your head, exhaustion that had built up in the past few days took over and you finally drifted off, your dreams filled with the sound of a soothing voice lulling you to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it’s just the beginning! so much more to be known... and you have so many questions...


End file.
